
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 12, 1994                   TAG: 9402120082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

U.S.-RUSSIAN SHUTTLE CREW SAFELY HOME

Space shuttle Discovery and its U.S.-Russian crew returned safely to Earth on Friday after a symbolically important but operationally unsuccessful mission.

Announcing its approach with a trademark double sonic boom, the shuttle landed smoothly at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:19 p.m., ending an eight-day, 3.4-million-mile flight.

The nation's 60th shuttle flight was the first time that Americans and Russians, once archrivals in human spaceflight, were launched into orbit aboard the same ship.

But it was a hard-luck flight, a fact symbolized by its tardy return to Cape Canaveral. An opportunity to land earlier in the day had to be waved off because of high winds and moderate cloud cover.

More significantly, the shuttle's primary mission was a near-total failure.

The crew was to have released and retrieved the Wake Shield Facility, a free-flying factory for semiconductor materials. However, communications and guidance problems thwarted deployment of the $13.5 million satellite.

by CNB